Can you have a successful CMDB without Discovery and Service Mapping?

[Rodel]

Hey everyone,

I wanted to check and see if anyone has successfully implemented the CMDB without using ServiceNow Discovery and Service Mapping and what did it look like?

• Do you manually create Business Services and Business applications?
• Do you automate the creation of some assets using the various data sources?
• Do you map the applications to the server it resides on and the network device it uses manually? 

I am waiting on budget to approve the purchase of Discovery and Service Mapping, but I want to know my options if this is something that will not be approved? What is the minimal viable product that works for your organization? 

[adilrathore]

I think that creation of assets using various data-sources would be the easiest among the three if you already have a Discovery Solution like SCCM in place wherein you can create a JDBC datasource from the database of the discovery solution and transform the data to CMDB. 

About mapping applications I too would be keen to know from the community members if there is an alternate as right now I dont see any.

[DaveHertel]

Hi Rodel --   Yes, its possible to have a CMDB without Discovery or Service Mapping, BUT... automation is exceedingly important for long-term viability.  Any manually-managed data (CI's, services, etc.) are very, very, VERY likely to become stale without automation.  And if CMDB becomes stale, it is soon distrusted (i.e.that is, its no longer seen by business owners as "the source of truth") and when this happens, the value of the CMDB drops and eventually its simply not useful.   The point?  Automation is KEY to a reliable, trusted data source that the business will rely upon.

If you don't use Discovery, use something -- SCCM, automated imports, whatever it takes -- but automation is paramount for long term success. In my humble opinion 🙂  don't even THINK about manually managing 1000's and 1000's of IT Hardware/Software items and their relationships.  Not practical, viable or any way realistic in today's exceedingly complex IT world.   If your company has adopted the ServiceNow platform, Discovery is natural (and best, IMHO) compliment to the ecosystem -- numerous ITSM processes can leverage the built-in CMDB components.  But the content must be reasonably well maintained (read: automation) for ITSM & other capabilities to leverage their value. 

Hope this helps?

[Rodel]

Thanks Dave! Do you know if it makes sense to build a business service and map the applications to the top service then map the sub-business process that use that application?  if we do not have servers, network devices or any other assets in the CMDB? I mocked up a hypothetical Business Service below and wanted to know how far down the relationship map of a business service should we go and would including the application as part of the business service made sense? I noticed that a number of diagrams do not even include the application used by the service.

I also noticed in a ServiceNow dev instance that there is a "Slack" business service without any other relationships. I would think Slack is typically an application that would roll up to a business service relating to communication. Can you help clarify what might be the best approach without any integrations to pull assets and keep it very high-level.

[DaveHertel · Accepted solution]

Hi Rodel -- Yes, I think it makes sense to map the services in a manner like this.  BUT again, I fully believe automation and distributed ownership is necessary to keep it accurate.   Its great to build business hierarchical relationships like this in the platform as they can provide a lot of value to ITSM processes.   Keep in mind long-term sustainability.  Who is going to keep this up to date?  How?   What about when they leave?  retire?  get bored with it? new boss takes over, whatever....  

When I worked at Intel 10 years ago, the SN CMDB service model didn't exist -- so we built our own, which BTW looks very much like what ServiceNow just released as the Common Services Data Model 2.0. CSDM 2.0 is here   But back years ago it had to be hand-wired together manually and maintained.   Designated service owners had to A) understand B) buy-in to owning it  C) maintain it   It took a LOT of meetings, training, and management support to sustain it back then.

  Why do i bring this up?  because your original question inquired about using automation (i.e. Disco, SM, etc.) to populate CMDB.  Not only is automation crucial for CMDB, but its also extremely important for higher level objectives like the service model you are considering.

I definitely do NOT suggest trying to do this without integrations and automation.  Why? If the business leadership has not bought into the need to invest in automation, then this implies also:

A) They don't appreciate How complex the IT ecosystem truly is to support these services

B) They don't comprehend Service definitions need to be built with corresponding accountability 

C) Tools/capabilities (automation) are needed to achieve A & B for long term sustainability

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